Google Announced In-Depth Articles

These results are ranked algorithmically based on many signals that look for high-quality, in-depth content. You can help our algorithms understand your pages better by following these recommendations:

How to Implement Schema.org Article Markup on Your Site

And here comes the hard part: the practical side of doing article markup on your posts.

Assuming that you truly believe you have what it takes to write the kind of definitive guides that might compete with publishing giants or Google will give “the little guy” a fighting chance to rank in their in-depth articles, how do you actually add the article markup to your posts?

1. There are no WordPress plugins to do it.

So far, I couldn’t find a single plugin that includes the Article function.

UPDATE:I did find the single best source to implement the entire set of Schema markups, plus markup for Facebook Open Graph, Twitter Cards, Google+ Interactive posts, and more.

You simply use Data Highlighter to tag the data fields on your site with a mouse. Then Google can present your data more attractively — and in new ways — in search results and in other products such as the Google Knowledge Graph.

And even though their article markup falls a bit short of schema.org/article, it’s still the simples and might even be the best article markup tool we’ve got.

On the Tagger page, use the mouse to select an image or piece of text.

From the pop-up menu that displays after you make your selection, click the type of data that you selected. For example, click Title.

Continue selecting and clicking the type for all required data and any optional data that is available. Helpful hints.

Confirm the tagging by viewing the data in the My Data Items column. If the alert icon displays, click the data next to the icon. Then review the tagging and do one of the following:

If the tagging is incorrect, click the X next to the data. Then re-tag the data.

If the tagging is correct, click the alert icon itself and select Clear warning.

Click Publish.

Data Highlighter automatically publishes the page. The next time Google crawls the page, the structured data in your page set will display on the structured data page. It might take some time for the data to appear as rich snippets, in the Google Knowledge Graph, or in other Google products. If rich snippets aren’t appearing for your site, see possible reasons why.

3. Google Structured Data Markup Helper

Found another tool by Google – Structured Data Markup Helper; similar to Data Highlighter, very easy to use, but it does require you to copy and paste HTML code in your post after it generates it.

Does make a lot of sense though, so check it out.

Resources to Do General Schema Markup

I am sure it’s just a matter of time before someone creates a plugin to add article markup or updates an existing one with this function.

Until then, here are my suggestions to implement other types of Schema markups:

Interesting Discussions on In-Depth Articles on Google

We have to face the reality that Google doesn’t care about “surfacing the little guy” or “reduced access to legacy content.” Their business model is built upon getting something useful to the searcher withing the top few results or ads. They may say they want to rank the “best,” but at the end of the day, how can they even successfully judge that, and if users are happy with what they are getting in the top few positions, then it works for Google.

So….what can the “little guy” do? It’s hard, but not hopeless. I think things like markup and authorship and social actually give the “little guy” who’s willing to put in the work a fighting chance he never had before in the history of marketing.

- My visitors do not see schema markup
– My visitors do not see authorship markup
– My visitors do not see rel next and rel prev tags
– My visitors see the logo just fine
– I provide the best content I can

In-Depth Articles Marketing Takeaway

In addition to well-known publishers, you’ll also find some great articles from lesser-known publications and blogs.

I am yet to see any.

However, I am very excited about investing in thoughtful in-depth content that will remain relevant for months or even years after publication – for my incredible Traffic Generation Café readers, not for Google.

If you like this post and think it would be valuable to your followers, share the ish out of it for me, would you?

Hi Anna, my bad, i didn’t specify what i was needing. it comes from this page

support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744

n the section of the first page (example . com/article-part1), add a link tag pointing to the next page in the sequence, like this:

Because this is the first URL in the sequence, there’s no need to add markup for rel=”prev”.

its also talking about using the rel = prev code but says to enter into the head section of the page and thats my confusion for WordPress.

And when i did the it created duplicate title and meta description issues inside GWT so i just broke up the long articles into their own articles so i could write my own titles and descriptions. i keep reading to use this next page tag but havent heard how to get around the dupe title issue with it so thats why i was interested in these 2 new codes Google is talking about to show the relation to a multipart article

That did help with one of my pagination issues, though I should have known the canonical with Yoast seo plugin, I only see it about every day

I also did a test to see if this will take away the dupe title and metatag issue i had before using pagination with the next page code.

now the one thing i did not see that either one did is to put the rel=”prev” or rel=”next ” so Google knows this is part of the series. I also read the article you referenced but he didnt talk about how to use this in WordPress. all the instructions state to put this in the section and not sure how to do that in worpdress.

I don’t think you really need to add “prev” or “next”, Chris; that’s not the only way to do it. The method I suggested breaks down your pages for the readers, but Google still knows that the first page is the primary and won’t index other pages, thus you won’t have dupe content issues.

Thank you for this very informative post. I was looking for the best resources to read about the latest Google update which in this case is in-depth articles and found everything I needed to learn here. Incidentally, your post is also used as reference by other sites and that is cool.

Hopefully next time you can write a post about the disadvantages of writing in-depth articles if there be any you can think of or experience. I’m sure there are also disadvantages to it just like other algo updates.

A very good article on Google in-depth. When I first read about in-depth update I was searching for an article like this which can explain in-depth about this new concept. I am looking forward on more articles about this topic from you. Thanks a lot for this article.

Great overview, Ana, very thorough and in-depth. I’ve been messing recently with various markup plugins (Twiitercards, Open Graph, etc), but never seem to work them out (even following the developer’s FAQs). For example, I switched on WP Social SEO last night, tried to fill out the Facebook one, and got lost, so deactivated.

Know of any really good, simple walkthroughs that explains things in depth for a luddite like me?

Another Awesome post Ana,
I just Installed the WP Social SEO booster to see if it can help my blog.
I am getting tired of Google and all their crazy updates, its just unnecessary, I am very sure that very soon, some SEOrs will be gaming the system.
BTW, did you read the latest posts on Viperchill.com by Glen

Well at least Google makes sure we are not getting bored. Always something new to learn, and Ana there to lead us on the right path!! thanks Ana. Not sure if I am ready to tackle this one yet, it seems a bit new and maybe not yet worth my time. But thanks for the in-depth coverage. Much appreciated.

It was definitely very informative and in-depth. This information sounds all “nice nice” in theory. But I very skeptical on how it actually plays out in the wild. All Google’s actions of late clearly stamp out the little guy and quality bloggers in their search results. They are clearly favoring big brands even if the smaller guys have some great content as well. Ultimately it’s their game and their rules. That’s why I’m focusing less on SEO these days and more on content marketing and relationship building to get the visibility.

But again I’m interested in seeing how this really plays out for the little guy.

Well said Anna! I would never advocate taking no action. I’m just arguing I wouldn’t focus so much of my attention on what Google is doing. The great thing about all these random changes that Google makes is that it’s frustrating and it forces you to think outside the box again. Before Google we as internet marketers were a lot more creative when it came to getting traffic. I definitely think we need to return to that and situations like this just further validate this. But I welcome any changes that give the little guy some visibility.

Speaking of “canonicalization” I find that your blog has two rel=canonical tags in the , once added by wordpress and another by Yoast’s SEO plugin.
Remove the first one by adding the following line of code to your theme’s functions.php

remove_action( ‘wp_head’, ‘rel_canonical’ );

You may also find an option in the SEO plugin’s control panel to disable it without adding the above code.

Okay Ana,
Let me know if its a go [if you are buying], BTW, I sent them a mail to ask if it supports the Schema “Article” Markup and in their reply, they said it does; that the plugin automatically adds the markup to all post

I am the owner of WPSocial.com and the creator of the WP Social SEO Booster Pro plugin. I can tell you that I use Genesis myself on a few sites and have Version 2.0 installed. While they support the Schema.org markup, they do not have what our plugin has and that is the ability to use almost all of Google’s currently supported Rich Snippet Microdata from Schema.org. Not just the “Article” attribute.

The plugin also provides Authorship and Publisher status integration for not just Google, but it supports Facebook’s new Authorship and Publisher setup as well. We provide full Open Graph support for Facebook, Itemprop for Google, Twitter Card integration, Pinterest Rich Pins support, and Google Plus Interactive Posts.

We have just added Image Sitemaps since Yoast’s plugin does not (only attachment sitemaps) and KML/ GEO sitemaps for Local Businesses, plus Facebook Local Open Graph support.

I invite you to test your site’s Social Optimization with and without our plugin setup on your site by using the free test tool at Knowem here: http://smo.knowem.com

What a sigh of relief! In-depth articles, which means I AM on the right track because ALL my articles do reach great lengths and someone one wonders if they are too long, or just alright! So, now Google does approve of them, provided of course you have something good to share with your readers, isn’t it?

Ah…is this something new that came up, which also means that we need to do this with all our posts? I did see the video where you mentioned that you could choose the former option if it’s to work for all the articles, or similar articles.

Thank you SO much for letting us know about yet another important update, which I don’t think I’d have ever known, or perhaps got to know of a little later.

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